Hi, all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE HONEY BEE “DANCE LANGUAGE” HYPOTHESIS?
Ruth Rosin
American Bee Journal (1999) 139(9): 659
The well known honey bee “dance language” controversy is of considerable importance to beekeepers, because the resolution of this controversy will determine in which direction honey bee research will go in the attempts to help beekeepers increase the yield of honey they can obtain from their colonies.
I shall provide here a very brief list of some of the most devastating arguments against the “dance language” hypothesis.
Von Frisch justifiably concluded in the early 20s that honey bee recruits use odor alone and no information about the location of any food. In order to fit his early 1920s results within his later “dance language” hypothesis, it is necessary to accept that recruits use “dance language” information with distance errors of up to 900&, which is simply incredible.
The low upwind zig-zag through which recruits invariably arrive at stations (man-made sites with the foragers’ food-odor) fully fits the expectations from use of odor alone and grossly contradicts the expectations from use of “dance language’ information. “Dance language” supporters have desperately attempted to fit this typical manner of arrival within the “dance language” hypothesis, to no avail. There was even an attempt to suggest that this typical manner of arrival may not exist at all, after v. Frisch had regularly used this typical manner of arrival as a criterion to count all new-arrivals at all his test stations.
“Dance language” supporters never did, nor could submit a valid claim for use of “dance language” information. This is so, because in order to substantiate a claim for use of “dance language” information vs. use of odor alone, it is necessary to first determine the expectations from both possibilities. “Dance language” supporters, however, err in their expectations from both use of odor alone and use of “dance language’ information; which makes their claims doubly impossible.
Honey bees cannot have a “dance language” which utilizes information from foragers’ dances, because they must perform arithmetic calculations in order to obtain the information at the level of accuracy they show in experiments, and even in order to obtain any distance and direction information at all. Insects, however, cannot perform arithmetic calculations, or even count in the first place.
The presumed “dance language” could not evolve at all, because users of odor alone turn out to be even much more efficient than presumed users of “dance language” information, in terms of the average number of dances performed per new-arrival.
What is wrong with the “dance language” hypothesis? Everything!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note added on Sept. 19, 2003. The first sentence in item no. 2 is based on Wenner’s work. All the rest is based on my own work. I had to retype the article by hand for the benefit of Bee-L readers, so I hope it will be posted.
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("prickly pear")
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
|
